This invention relates to the charging of telecommunication services and will be described in the context of selectively charging services delivered via a single communication line to a selected one of two or more accounts associated with that line. This may be useful eg. in a solicitor""s office where calls are to be billed to different clients.
Traditionally the services delivered via a telephone line have been charged to a single account associated with that line.
Australian patent No. 664611 describes a telephone subset where the cost of calls may be charged against different users each of whom has a personal identification number, using information stored in the subset.
The phone owner could set a credit limit for each PIN, eg., equivalent to a pre-paid amount and the phone could deduct call cost in accordance with tariff scales stored in the phone.
However, it was possible to circumvent this arrangement by replacing the PIN locked phone with a standard phone and the call costs would be charged to the phone owner.
This invention provides an arrangement in which telecommunication services provided over a single line can be charged selectively to a selected one of two or more accounts, wherein, at the exchange a flag in a first memory is set indicating that an account access code is required before a call can be initiated from that line, the exchange being responsive to the call access code to enable a call to be established and to charge the call cost to an account identified by at least part of the account access code.
According to a first embodiment of the invention, there is provided an arrangement for enabling telecommunication services provided over a line connected to a network to be charged to a selected one of two or more accounts associated with the line, the arrangement including:
first register means within the network to indicate that the line is associated with said two or more accounts;
control means responsive to the first register means to prevent the establishment of a connection initiated over the line until an access code has been received over the line;
wherein, on receipt of the access code, the control means enables the establishment of a call initiated over the line and causes the cost for the service to be charged to an account identified by the access code.